Recovering shopaholic? Tunisia could serve you well as a dry destination (though you won’t want for decent wine). The popular Andalusian-inspired pottery is cheap and charming, but nothing to write home about, most of the leatherwork resembles something out of Handicrafts of Asia circa 1973, and the traditional vintage textiles are exquisite but near unwearable unless you’re thinking of joining a glam revival band (expensive and hard to track down to boot).
After a month of travel, I felt extremely virtuous, having bought nothing besides what the local’s beloved Monoprix, a ubiquitous French supermarche chain, offered up – jasmine soaps, strange fake saffron, tilleul teabags, alarmingly coloured toothpaste and a perfect crepe pan. With a flight home looming, I knew I had to bite the bullet and brave the souks (a prodigal mother cannot open her suitcase without gifts spilling out; then there’s my sister, a mother-in-law, the husband etc).
So I set aside an afternoon for shopping. Returning to the traders in the Tunis medina was an unexpected pleasure. Weeks before I’d stayed within the old city walls and been harassed at each pass, but now it was all ‘Madam! You’re back – no one ever comes back!’ A little mercantile banter later, and the promised discounts materialised. Fouta – striped and betassled cotton bathsheets – tick; slippers in soft pistachio, rose and chocolate leather, tick; a few little vials of fleur d’oranger oil, tick. Still, back in my Sidi Bou Saïd hotel, I realised this bag of souk loot would hold little appeal for my daughters.
The street-side souq in Sidi Bou Saïd, a northern Tunis suburb, might appear to be less formidable than those in the tangled knot of the medina, but I soon found it wasn’t the case. Despite that fact that my stay in the village was a relatively long one and I always dressed modestly in shirts and ballerina-length full skirts or tunics and wide length pants, Sidi Bou Said’s traders never dropped the charade, cat-calling, issuing propositions and fixing outrageous prices for the drabbest of old tat. But I needed a few last little-girl friendly gifts, so I gritted my teeth and headed for a haggle.
The owl and cat figurines you see above are from the northern town of Sejnane. They are a dime a dozen, churned out by to appeal to the tourist trade, but are still made by village craftswomen by hand, dried first in the sun then fired in crude outdoor pits, a Berber practice that predates the use of a wheel or sophisticated firing techniques. Geometric patterns that have been used for millennia – chevrons, cheques, scallops and the like – are made with the black juice of the mastic tree on the characteristic ochre or tan base. The reoccurring designs reference animist beliefs that predate those of the Phonecians, Romans or Arabs, though the creation of animal figures rather than pots or plates or some other kind of utilitarian vessel date back only a hundred years or so, when solely decorative pieces were made to please French colonial tastes (an authentic kind of inauthenticity). I was immediately drawn to the figures, for their strong, earthy duotones but also for the restrained but gestural line work that has an almost contemporary, illustrative edge, and moves seamlessly between two and three dimensions. And despite their undeniable appeal (how can one resist a coupling that conjures the sailors of the pea green boat?), they seemed rather left on the shelf, passed over in favour of baskets of stuffed camels and racks of fake football kit.
I hoped to secure a large cat for myself as well, but the doe-eyed teenager manning the stall seemed intent on exacting more than cash from me in exchange for the striking piece. Beckoning me into the gloom where the cat sat on a high shelf, he quite suddenly bit, yes bit, my arm, declaring I was as pretty as the moon, had the most beautiful eyes and hair he’d ever seen, and that if I met him later the big cat would be mine, no dinar required. I was too shocked to react, but instead thrust some dinars into his hand and fled, my two small ceramic charges safely in my hand.
My youngest daughter’s owl hit the deck pretty soon after it arrived home, breaking neatly in two at the claws. Still, you can hardly see the break and it served as a nice reminder of the temporal, unsentimental nature of pottery of this kind, made for everyday use, and easily replaced when the inevitable happens.
As for myself, I did manage to acquire a small coral charm, which I loved because it closely resembles the jewellery my Genovese in-laws wear. Bought from Ed Dar, a fascinating and friendly antique shop in the medina’s rue Sidi Ben Arous, it originates from the northern seaside resort of Tabarka, near the Algerian border, a Genovese stronghold in the 15th century, and where a fort built by the once great city state’s seafarers and merchants still watches over the town. The necklace too tells its own story of the rise and fall of empires, and of Mediterranean trade both ancient and modern.
